:talkingfuture.com Come and learn about the future…

Martin: There are many forms of print media including books, magazines and newspapers. Let us start with newspapers first. Newspapers are dead. There sales have been falling forever, the Internet gives me news within the hour, why would I want to read about it tomorrow. The only thing that the newspaper can give me is a well thought out opinion piece, rather than all the facts transcribed as quickly as possible and posted to a website. Although the Internet can do opinion pieces too. In fact, the best places on the Internet to get news, opinions and features are the websites of newspapers.

I can’t remember the last time I bought a newspaper, but I look at timesonline.co.uk and telegraph.co.uk several times a day, I even browse the New York Times because I can. The Daily Telegraph has a great site with an iPhone app and RSS feeds to all their best writers like James May and Boris Johnson. I reckon they might be the first UK national daily that takes a brave pill and dumps the print edition altogether. What do you think? Will newspapers be around forever? Will some people never give up the morning paper? Can they compete in the online world against all the other news sources?

Thomas: I think your on the right lines with the newspapers. I know you don’t buy a daily paper, but then I don’t think you ever have done? I sometimes get a paper to read over lunch, and I find I read articles covering a much broader range of topics than I would if I just hit news.bbc.co.uk on my laptop. Also, I spend most of the day looking at an LCD screen, 60 minutes looking at paper just gives my eyes some much needed relief!

How about magazines? I subscribe to a couple of magazines but I rarely read the news sections. I do enjoy the opinion and editorial pieces though, I’m much more likely to read an in depth article in a magazine for 45 minutes than read the same amount of text on the Internet. Reading on a laptop screen can be distracting, what with new emails arriving, reflections in a glossy screen and the almost constant interruption of flashy adverts. That is a criticism I could only level at laptop or PC browsing though, a well designed eBook reader could solve all of these problems.

To summarize magazines, I think the market and range of magazines available will decrease, but just like with newspapers they are not going to vanish completely. How about books, do you think an eBook reader can usurp the mighty paperback?

Martin: I can imagine a world without newspapers easily enough. I can sort of imagine a world without magazines. As you said the features are great but the news aspect is so much easier to get on a minute by minute rather than month by month basis. Perhaps the way forward for magazines is to do what Car magazine did – keep the features and reviews in print and shunt all the latest news to the website where it has a better chance of being relevant. Wired should try this and then up the number of features they carry.

The one thing I can’t see vanishing is the book. I love the concept behind devices like the Kindle, but at the end of the day you just seem to have to pay the price of 20 books before you can read one book. Ok so you can carry all the books you own in your pocket, but when do you need to do that? If the hardware came down in price then I could see ebooks gaining popularity with students. It would be great to take all your books to lectures without having to carry a 40 litre rucksack. Of course the technology isn’t really there yet for most textbooks because the best ones have lots of detailed, colour diagrams and charts rather than reams of plain, boring text.

I can’t see myself buying an ebook reader anytime in the near future. How about you?

Thomas: I think I would buy one, but then I have a hard time resisting anything with an LCD display! I doubt I’d use it much though, the hardware just isn’t right yet, the displays needs to be higher resolution and lit by ambient light alone, backlights just cause eye strain.

The biggest problem of all with eBooks is with book sharing. When I’ve done with a good book I pass it on to my dad to read, after my mum reads a good book it gets passed along to her sisters, when my grandma wants a good book she goes to the library and gets 6 at a time for free. Once I’m done with a book and I’ve no one else to share it with, I drop it off at the local charity shop so someone else can get the benefit. Until an eBook comes along that can meet or exceed the specifications of the humble paperback, including reflectivity of the screen and the ability to lend it to your mum, the eBook is destined to fail.